Gary Streeter: I welcome the pressure that the British Government are putting on the Israeli Government to reopen the crossings and the humanitarian support that we are giving through the non-governmental organisations in Gaza. However, what steps and systems has the Secretary of State put in place to ensure that British taxpayers' money is not being diverted in Gaza in order to be used to create rockets to be fired into Israel?

Douglas Alexander: I hope that I can give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that he seeks. There are clearly established mechanisms, principally through the UN and the ICRC, to provide support. We are providing about £100 million through UNRWA to the Palestinian territories over a period of five years. However, in addition to those assurances, we continue to speak to the Palestinian Authority, principally to President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad, and to impress on them the importance of taking forward the work in the Palestinian community to find a way forward, not least in relation to Gaza.

Douglas Alexander: I begin by welcoming the hon. Gentleman to his Front-Bench post as Liberal Democrat spokesman on international development. We are extremely concerned by the humanitarian situation. I have seen the reports to which he has referred and which were written by an UNWRA representative. Since July 2007, when the closure regime was tightened, we have made active diplomatic efforts to ensure that the humanitarian situation has eased. In December, I took the opportunity to discuss the Israeli Government's defence posture and humanitarian obligations with Ehud Barak. As recently as at the weekend, my colleague the Foreign Secretary raised those matters directly with Minister Livni, the Israeli Government's foreign affairs spokesman.

Douglas Alexander: First, I am sorry that Lord Ashdown has felt obliged to withdraw his candidacy for the post of UN special representative, as he would have served with great distinction and ability in that role. Before he withdraw his candidacy, I had an opportunity to discuss these matters with President Karzai at the end of last week. Although the question of who should be the UN special representative should be discussed with the Afghan Government, the judgment ultimately rests with the UN Secretary-General, with whom I have also therefore taken the opportunity to speak. It is right to recognise the urgency of stronger co-ordination within the donor community, but ultimately the initiative rests with the Secretary-General of the UN.

Mark Lancaster: During my service in Afghanistan, I experienced at first hand the challenges of trying to deliver meaningful development on the ground. The keys to success as highlighted by the Afghanistan compact are capacity building, co-ordination and a bottom-up approach through the production of community development plans. Tomorrow marks the second anniversary of the signing of the compact, yet the Afghan Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development remains the only vaguely functioning Department in the provinces and only a tiny percentage of communities have produced meaningful plans. Why has so little progress been made, and what specific action does the Secretary of State intend to take to address the situation?

Andrew Mitchell: Will the hon. Lady, whom we congratulate on her promotion, look carefully at the valuable report produced by Business Action for Africa, which has been mentioned by the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble), and note the enormous importance of business and the private sector in the fight against HIV/AIDS—a recognition that has not always been part of the Minister's Department's DNA?

Gordon Brown: Since June last year, we have put in an extra £50 million, so that we could inspect wards and improve infection control. We doubled the improvement teams in our hospitals and we have now introduced a new dress code. There will be screening in the future, while deep cleans, which the Opposition described as a gimmick, are already under way. We will always be vigilant. Matrons are to be doubled to 5,000. For those reasons, we can now report that MRSA infections are down 18 per cent. on the last quarter and that C. difficile infections are down 21 per cent. We are making progress and we will continue to make progress in the next year.

Gordon Brown: I met President Karzai last Friday and talked to him about those very issues. The fact of the matter is that the decision is for the UN Secretary-General, after consulting with all the coalition forces. That consultation is still taking place. I believe that Lord Ashdown would have been a great candidate for the job, but there has to be agreement among all those people involved, and that includes the decision by the UN Secretary-General. I hope that we will have a strong development co-ordinator, as the hon. Gentleman wants.

Gordon Brown: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who has taken a long-term interest in Kenya and in what happens in Africa. I talked to Kofi Annan and to Graça Machel, the mediators, last evening. I wanted them to send three clear messages to the Kenyan regime. The first is that democracy is not defended by killing people, and that those who are behind the violence will be held to account in the future. Secondly, dialogue and negotiation are the only way forward in resolving this crisis, and Kenya's politicians must now show the leadership that the Kenyan people want. European Foreign Ministers have made that clear, as did European leaders in a statement last night. Thirdly, the international community will not let the people of Kenya down. We have given £2 million to the Red Cross to help to relieve urgent humanitarian needs, and we will do everything that we can through the Department for International Development to provide help to those who have been displaced and harmed. We also stand ready to provide financial support to a genuinely representative Government who are prepared to put the interests of the people of Kenya first.

Gordon Brown: We have made £1.7 billion to help post offices in this country and we will continue to make money available for Post Office services. There is a process of consultation and an appeals system, although I do not know whether it was taken up. I urge the hon. Gentleman to meet the Minister in charge of the Post Office. We are listening to what people say, but the fact of the matter is that many post offices are not used in any great detail. We will continue to put the money in to help the Post Office service.

Philip Davies: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The Prime Minister reiterated his intention that the European Union treaty should be debated at length and line-by-line—

Greg Mulholland: I beg to move,
	That leave is given to bring in a Bill to require licensed premises which sell wine by the glass to offer measures of 125ml.
	The current regulations state that wine that is not pre-packed must be sold by the bottle, by the glass in measures of 125 ml, 175 ml or multiples thereof, or by the carafe. The Bill would simply require all licensed premises to offer a 125 ml measure in addition to the other sizes specified in the legislation. That is important because there has been a move in recent years to serve only larger sized glasses of wine in bars and pubs.
	I used to work in marketing, including for several leading marketing agencies, among whose customers were several leading pub companies, including bar and pub chains, so I know from my own experience that some of them made a deliberate policy decision to get rid of the 125 ml size and serve only the larger 175 ml and 250 ml glasses. Increasingly, therefore 175 ml has become the standard size or—awful word, but now often used in our increasingly Americanised language—regular size. The 250 ml measure then becomes a large size.
	The introduction of the larger glass sizes has had something to do with changing wine-drinking habits, as wine drinking in pubs has become more popular, and indeed we have seen the quality of wine improve dramatically in the licensed trade, which is a very good thing. But it is of course also about money. If people can be persuaded to "trade up", to use the business term, bigger glasses equal higher prices and greater profit.
	The psychology is clear. People do trade up. Often people order "large" as the default measure—a group of young women egging each other on Friday night after work, a boss not wanting to look stingy buying drinks for his staff or a man wanting to impress on a first date. The trend is not universal, and 125 ml glasses are still served in many individual licensee pubs and in many community pubs, but the serving of only the larger measures has become standard practice and actual policy. The introduction to the "The Good Pub Guide 2006" says:
	"This year we have spotted an unnerving trend for pubs to push up the size of their wine glasses, and of course the price of what's inside them. A standard glass of wine was 125ml...Now, many pubs use a 175ml glass as standard...To them, a large glass is 250ml, or a third of a bottle. This isn't generosity, it's just a way of getting more money into their tills, leaving many customers drinking more than they want to, and perhaps if they are driving, more than is safe. We suggest all pubs selling wine use the 125ml glass as their standard size."
	There are two issues at the heart of this Bill. The first relates to alcohol awareness and health, and the second is consumer choice. The 2006 survey by the Office for National Statistics said that 36 per cent. of people who had heard about the Government's guidelines on drinking could not say what they were. About a third of frequent beer drinkers and a quarter of frequent wine drinkers are not aware of the number of units that they are drinking.
	The rules of thumb, on which people used to rely, have become increasingly outdated. People often wrongly assume that a glass of wine is about a unit. That was based on a 125 ml glass, but when that is not offered, people think that a glass of wine is the standard measure available, now usually 175ml.
	Wine is also stronger than it used to be. A new way of representing alcohol consumption has been introduced, and that is a positive step. Now, a 125ml glass of 12.5 per cent. wine is deemed to be 1.5 units, a 175ml glass of the same wine is 2 units and a 250ml glass is 3 units. However, when the smaller glass sizes are not on offer, people fall into the trap of thinking, "I just had a few glasses of wine last night," when, in fact, if they had three large glasses, they had a whole bottle of wine. Alcohol Concern backs that up, saying,
	"Given the wide range of volumes provided on licensed premises... this creates a great deal of scope for confusion and accidental harmful drinking. A possibility that is now all the more likely given the normalisation, in many establishments, of large glass sizes".
	In the context of recent surveys and figures showing increasing health problems caused by excessive alcohol consumption, particularly of wine, women are of particular concern. Sixty-nine per cent. of women in this country drink wine and 55 per cent. of wine purchased in pubs in the UK is bought by women. Women are drinking more than ever before and it is having an effect on their health. Cases of liver disease in women aged 25 to 34 have doubled in the past decade. Alcohol Concern suggests that drinking two to five units per day increases the risk of breast cancer to 41 per cent. The incidence of breast cancer has increased by 12 per cent. in the past 10 years, with alcohol related to 4 per cent. of cases.
	The Bill is also about choice. If a wine-drinking customer wants to have only a small glass of wine, just as someone may want only half a pint of beer, he or she will be able to do so. If customers want the larger sizes, they will be able to have them, but at least they will have the information that they are larger. Consumer education is also important, and many pubs and bar chains clearly advertise how many units are in each glass size, which is to be commended.
	Let me say what the Bill is not about, lest there be any misrepresentation of it. It is not a means to stop licensed premises serving larger glasses, or to say that customers should not be offered a choice of sizes. It will not require pubs and bars to invest in new glasses: a 125 ml measure can be, and indeed often is, served in a 175 ml glass. Nor will it—or should it—stop customers who wish as a group to buy a bottle of wine, with a glass for each of them; that might give them the choice of having six 125 ml glasses, rather than four 175 ml. The Bill is not about decreasing choice for customers; it is about increasing choice for customers, as well as giving them better, clearer and more standardised information about what they are consuming.
	I am delighted to have the support not only of right hon. and hon. Members in all parts of the House, but of related organisations. Tacade, which promotes the health and well-being of children and is at the forefront of alcohol education, fully supports the Bill, saying:
	"Selling wine by the 125 ml glass would help enable people to have a better understanding of units of alcohol and adhere to the government's safe, sensible drinking guidelines".
	Alcohol Concern states:
	"In our view it is reasonable to demand that, as responsible vendors, licensees provide genuine choices for their customers by offering both small and large glasses. As such, we urge you to support it into a second reading."
	The editor of "The Good Pub Guide", Fiona Stapley, says
	"We absolutely agree with the sale of wine measure bill."
	I believe that this House and, indeed, the Government are committed to encouraging responsible drinking and to tackling the problems that arise when the guidelines are not followed. I therefore hope that the Government will genuinely embrace my Bill. There is no quick fix for the problems that we have seen recently in our towns and cities, but the Bill proposes a simple measure that could contribute to better awareness of alcohol consumption and the need to monitor it. That problem has already been highlighted by the Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. Member for Bristol, South (Dawn Primarolo), who said:
	"Larger glass sizes and higher alcohol content of wine in particular over a number of years mean more of us are drinking more than we think."
	I hope that the Government will listen to the organisations that have backed the Bill and to the various experts from the licensed trade and the health sector, and that they will seriously consider incorporating the Bill into the Government programme.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Greg Mulholland, Dr. Richard Taylor, John Thurso, Mr. Andrew Dismore, Mr. John Grogan, Lorely Burt, Peter Luff, Mr. Don Foster, Dr. Howard Stoate, Kelvin Hopkins, Mr. Nigel Evans and Peter Bottomley.

Greg Mulholland accordingly presented a Bill to require licensed premises which sell wine by the glass to offer measures of 125ml.: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 20 June, and to be printed [Bill 64].

John Hutton: I shall come on to that point. The important thing about the treaty of Lisbon—I hope that this reassures the hon. Gentleman—is that all the energy red lines are fully reflected in it. Let me set out the three most important ones. First, the treaty protects and secures our rights over our national oil and gas reserves. I would have thought that he would support that. Secondly, it will make sure that we can always act to ensure security of supply in emergencies. I would have thought that a Conservative Member of Parliament would support that. Finally, the new article will not impede progress in opening up EU energy markets. We hear a lot—rightly so—from Conservative Members about the importance of energy liberalisation. That is why the treaty of Lisbon is important and why we are right to introduce it in the way that we have.

John Hutton: I shall come on to energy liberalisation. It is right to point out that the Commission's current proposals are being strongly resisted by a number of member states. The important lesson that I draw from all of this is that we would not have reached this point in what I hope will be a substantial transformation of the EU energy market if it were not for qualified majority voting. It has provided a strong stimulus for reform of this important sector of our European economy. As I said, it would not have been possible to have reached this stage if it had not been for qualified majority voting.
	If we were to follow the advice of those on the Conservative Front Bench—I accept that not all Conservative Members feel the same way—we would be looking forward to a decade of introspection in the European Union, which would be damaging both to the EU and also, in particular, to the interests of the United Kingdom, which is my principal concern. I find it genuinely hard to understand the position that the Conservative party—officially, at least—is taking for two reasons. First, it wants to disown its role in relation to the Single European Act and the Maastricht treaty, both of which were in Britain's long-term economic and political interests and both of which rightly involved, in my view, extensions to majority voting in the Council. We would not have seen the opening up of markets in Europe without qualified majority voting.
	However, if that were not bad enough, there is the second problem with the Conservative party's position, which is that it now wants to blight Britain's future in the new enlarged European Union by renegotiating the basis of Britain's membership. It is that deadly combination of disowning the past and blighting the future which shows how grotesquely out of touch those on the Opposition Front Bench have become.  [Interruption.] I believe also that howling at the moon, which is the best description that one can give of the Conservatives' policy on Europe, is no rational substitute for a sensible policy on Europe, but I am afraid that that is all we hear today from most Conservative Members.

John Hutton: No. The hon. Gentleman has had his go.
	An enlarged but more effective European Union, because of the treaty, can help to support our national and global energy priorities.
	More than 50 years ago, the founders of the European Union recognised the critical importance of energy, then in the form of coal, to the economic and political security of Europe. Coal, along with steel, were identified as the two raw materials crucial to power and industry in the Europe of the time. Today, against an increasingly competitive and politicised energy landscape, energy sources are even more critical to the continued economic success of European Union member states.
	In recognition of that, the Lisbon treaty establishes a specific article—176—for energy policy, to give any energy measures passed at the EU level a specific legal base for the first time. Previously, the European Union could introduce directives on energy only by using other related articles, the most common of which were article 95, to do with the approximation of laws for the internal market, and article 175, dealing with the environment. Existing legislation passed under other articles include directives on the internal market in gas and electricity, under articles 47(2), 55 and 95, directives on the promotion of renewables and co-generation and on energy end-use efficiency and energy services, and the directive on the EU emissions trading scheme, all of which were made under article 175. Without a separate article, considerable time has undoubtedly been spent by the Commission, officials, national institutions and lawyers on looking inward at the bureaucracy of the EU rather than on discussing how we can deal with our energy challenges.
	I believe strongly that there is therefore a need to turn the aspiration of open competitive markets that secure affordable energy supply while working towards a global low-carbon economy into increased and better-focused action at an EU level.
	Supply disruptions to any one member state affect the European market as a whole and demonstrate that long-term bilateral contracts alone cannot wholly insulate countries from the impacts of supply tightness across the EU. The new separate article will make it easier for member states to discuss the issues in more depth and to work on delivering the energy solutions that we need. It will help to ensure that EU energy policies are clear, coherent and, we hope, mutually reinforcing.
	The new article will aim to do four things: ensure the functioning of the energy market; ensure security of energy supply in the EU; promote energy efficiency and energy savings and the development of new and renewable forms of energy; and promote the interconnection of energy networks.

John Hutton: I shall give way to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform in a minute.
	On the specific point about energy, it is important to bear in mind what the treaty says. It states:
	"measures shall not affect a Member State's right to determine the conditions for exploiting its energy resources, its choice between different energy sources and the general structure of its energy supply".
	Those are important guarantees to have in the treaty and the body of European law which were not there before. Given the perspective held by the right hon. Member for Wells, I would had thought he would be able to support them.

John Hutton: May I say how much I appreciate my hon. Friend's support? I am grateful to him for providing a clarification that we all regard as very helpful.
	I do not believe that a fair-minded person could regard the provisions in the treaty as being of anything other than a positive benefit to the UK and the EU as a whole, unless opposition to this article is being used a proxy by those who do not believe in tackling climate change or who want us to get out of the EU altogether. People will form their own opinion about that.
	In the move to a separate article, the treaty confirms the role of QMV, and its retention is unequivocally in the UK's national interest. For years the UK has been working to achieve energy priorities, such as the liberalisation of Europe's energy market. We believe that the competitiveness of Europe's energy markets is fundamental to the economic performance of the EU over the next 50 years. Although progress and agreement have been possible without a vote, the potential for a decision to be taken under QMV has removed many of the incentives for an individual country with protectionist instincts to try to block progress against the wishes of the majority.
	It seems certain to me that without QMV we would have made little or no progress in liberalising EU energy markets. In fact, it is arguable whether the Commission would even have proposed them in the first place. We would certainly have had no chance of securing the latest package of liberalisation measures, which those on the Opposition Front Bench have repeatedly called for us to support—the so-called third package of energy liberalisation, which is being negotiated. The UK strongly supports those proposals, which represent a real breakthrough in opening up Europe's energy markets. The aim is to prevent incumbent energy players from keeping others out of the market, and to promote competition. That would benefit energy consumers—individuals and businesses—in the UK. We are working with the Commission and our member state allies to make sure that that happens.
	It will not be easy, as there is significant opposition to the proposals. Under a regime of voting by unanimity—which is what I suspect many Opposition Members would prefer—opponents of change could sit on their hands and resist any progress whatsoever, but with QMV we can make, and are making, real progress. We are unlocking decision making, breaking down time-consuming bureaucratic stalemates and helping to promote policies that we believe are in the interests of all the people of the EU.
	I turn now to the important relationship between the EU and UK energy policy. Half a century ago, the European Coal and Steel Community brought European countries together in economic and political partnerships to build a lasting peace across the continent after the carnage of two world wars. Those early steps have borne considerable fruit. We have come closer together, and that is a good thing. Our continent is more prosperous and peaceful, and those are obviously positive developments. The threat of full-scale confrontation between European countries no longer exists.
	In all those respects, the EU has played a positive role. I hope that hon. Members from all parties can agree on that at least, but we are undoubtedly still confronted by many difficult challenges, both at home and abroad. We are clear that every member state should be responsible for its own energy resources. That is not a Community competence, and nor should it be. It has been an important red line in the Lisbon treaty negotiations, and the treaty does not change that basic legal reality.
	The Government have set out the objectives of our energy policy. We have focused on ensuring the secure provision of affordable and sustainable energy supplies for every UK citizen, as well as the successful transition of our country to a low-carbon economy. We are working with the energy companies and consumers to improve energy efficiency and increase our use of low-carbon energy sources so as to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. However, fossil fuels will remain a major part of our energy mix for years to come. The best way to protect ourselves against potential supply difficulties caused by either natural disasters or resource nationalism is to develop as diverse a mix of energy sources, suppliers and trade routes as possible.
	The UK is also undergoing a long-term transition from being a net energy exporter to being a net energy importer. Unlike many EU member states, we had years of being self-sufficient in oil and gas production but, however successfully we manage our remaining North sea oil and gas reserves, by 2020 imports are likely to account for well over half of our oil and gas requirements.
	I believe that dealing effectively with those challenges means that we have to build a solid base of strong bilateral and multilateral relationships. Moreover, although our national measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions can play an important part in tackling the problem, UK greenhouse gas emissions amount to only 2 per cent. of world emissions. Obviously, therefore, we need to work closely with other countries on a global level to make a significant difference. By acting with an enlarged and, thanks to the Lisbon treaty, more efficient EU, the UK will be able to help to deliver solutions for climate change and energy security at a European and international level.

John Hutton: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those questions, but we are not going to cap any source of energy. That would be entirely the wrong thing to do, and completely incompatible with the fundamental features of our energy market. The question of carbon capture is especially pertinent in relation to the future of gas and coal, and all hon. Members should take some pride in the fact that the UK is the only member of the EU that is committed to a carbon capture and storage demonstration project on a commercial scale. I hope that other countries will make a similar commitment so that we can look at a range of technologies—including post-combustion, pre-combustion, oxy fuel, coal and gas—that could begin to make a significant difference.
	Taking CCS out of the equation would cause a problem on a global scale when it comes to dealing with climate change. Estimates made by the International Energy Agency, the Stern review and others show that as much as a third of our total global carbon mitigation strategy will depend on CCS technology. So my answer to the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) is that we should not set about the problem by capping energy sources but that we should maximise the energy that we get from renewable sources, and the EU has proposals to that end.
	In addition, I think that we should look at nuclear, and the Government have made our position clear on that. Finally, gas and coal will be part of our energy mix for some considerable time, and CCS will be an important way to make sure that those energy sources do not make matters worse. However, I do not believe that placing caps on individual energy sources is the right thing to do.

John Hutton: I agree strongly with my right hon. Friend, and I pay tribute to her work on energy policy. We hear a lot from Opposition Members about the costs of Europe for energy consumers in the UK—I have been reading a briefing that was made available to Conservative Members this morning. What is always missing from such debates is any mention of the significant benefits of EU membership when it comes to energy, and which my right hon. Friend highlighted. It is true that the report to which she referred highlights the fact that the UK has the most liberalised energy market in the EU. It also makes it clear that it is the most competitive energy market in the EU. That simply would not be the case if it had not been for the extension of QMV to such issues. I am perfectly prepared to acknowledge that that is an achievement of the Conservative Government, but the sad thing is that not many Conservative Members present want to acknowledge that. That is a sad reflection on the direction that Conservative politics have taken.

Albert Owen: The Secretary of State made a strong case about the UK influencing the European Union. If we have a united European policy on energy, is it not the case that we can influence other countries—emerging economies such as India and China? Is that not good for citizens of the UK?

John Hutton: The treaty provides a clearer legal basis for taking forward such work in the future. That is important, and we have important guarantees about our national reserves and strategic supplies, which I should have thought the hon. Gentleman would support. The sad truth is that we have not completed the job of energy liberalisation in the European Union, but the treaty of Lisbon will provide a clearer platform on which to take that work forward.
	We all have choices in this debate. The hon. Gentleman is expressing his support for energy liberalisation, which I am glad to hear, but the position of those on the Conservative Front Bench—which, as I understand it, is not to ratify the Lisbon treaty but to renegotiate the treaty basis of the UK's membership of the European Union—would set back progress on energy liberalisation, not speed it up. That is the choice that he and others have to address.
	As the House knows, last week the EU published its draft renewable energy directive, as part of a wider climate and energy package. The draft directive provides the framework for achieving the EU's agreed target of securing 20 per cent. of EU energy from renewable sources by 2020. It also proposes specific contributions from member states towards this goal. The Commission has proposed that 15 per cent. of all the UK's energy should come from renewable sources by 2020.
	The directive also contains a target for 10 per cent. of all transport fuels to come from renewable sources by 2020. It is crucial that this biofuels target does not undermine global sustainability in any way. That is why we will continue to argue strongly for strict sustainability criteria to be applied to the biofuels that can be used to meet that target.
	We see the proposals as a good starting point for discussion in the Council, and we believe that an EU working more effectively together can deliver the necessary action to match this ambition. We want all member states to be able to deliver their agreed targets in the most cost-effective way. We are committed to achieving whatever UK target is agreed following negotiations in the coming months, and we have made a strong start, with the announcement of a potential massive expansion of offshore wind, approval already given for the world's largest offshore wind farm, which will be located in the Thames estuary, consent granted for one of the world's largest biomass plants, which is to be built in Wales, and the launch of a feasibility study on harnessing the tidal estuary of the River Severn, the second largest project of its kind in the world.
	There are many more important renewables projects in the planning system. The successful passage of the Planning Bill currently before the House will be vital to reduce delays in making the best projects happen. However, it is obvious that we will need to redouble our efforts to reach the 2020 target. This summer, we will launch a consultation on what more we should do to boost renewable energy to meet our share of the EU 2020 target. We look forward to a serious national debate about how we can best do that, to help feed into and shape the UK's renewable energy strategy, which I hope will be published in spring next year.
	Through the Energy Bill, we will put in place measures to strengthen the renewables obligation to triple renewable electricity from renewables obligation eligible sources by 2015, and in April the renewable transport fuel obligation will be introduced. As many hon. Members know, that will require suppliers to include 5 per cent. of renewables in their fuel mix by 2011.
	By drawing a line under institutional reform in the EU for the foreseeable future—whereas it is the position of the Opposition parties to bring it back into the full glare of publicity—ratification of the Lisbon treaty will give us the time and energy to focus on issues such as those that I have outlined, which really matter to EU members and citizens. That is why the position being taken by those on the Opposition Front Bench is so damaging to the UK's long-term national interests.

Rob Marris: To draw those two threads together, is not the Opposition suggestion that we could do this anyway, without the treaty, an example of looking through the wrong end of the telescope? My understanding is—my right hon. Friend will correct me if I am wrong—that nothing in the Lisbon treaty would prevent the kind of initiatives mentioned by my right hon. Friend that the Government are already taking. Furthermore, there are elements to the treaty which, if the treaty is ratified across the EU, would enable this country and other member states to do even more—the sort of international co-operation to which my right hon. Friend has just referred.

John Hutton: I did deal with that point— [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) may not have liked my answer, but I definitely dealt with the point. To recap, I should say that we did have concerns about an energy article; there is no question about that. However, the concerns have been addressed. The importance of the Lisbon treaty in relation to energy is that there are important new energy red lines. First, we are able to protect and secure our rights over our national oil and gas reserves. Secondly, we can ensure that we can always act to ensure security of supply in emergencies. Furthermore, any new article will not impede progress in opening up EU energy markets and liberalisation. The concerns have been addressed; that is why I say to my hon. Friends, and to Members across the House, that they should support the ratification of the treaty.
	To make real progress on all these issues, UK has to play an active role in the European Union. The EU itself must be effective and efficient, focused on discussion and action beyond its own institutions on the issues that matter. Working together for the EU and each member state's national interest in relation to energy, the treaty of Lisbon will help us achieve that. It will enable the enlarged EU to work more efficiently, and the UK to negotiate more effectively about the future role and focus of a modern global Europe.
	As I have set out, the Lisbon treaty meets the UK's red lines, protecting the UK in areas of vital national importance and helping us to focus on the big issues, including energy. It is what we said we wanted: an amending treaty, not a constitution. It is a good deal for Britain and for the whole of Europe, and I commend it to the House.

Alan Duncan: Unlike the Secretary of State, I can start by saying, "Here's one I prepared earlier." However, once he got his script, I—and, I suspect, others in the House—sensed that his heart was not quite in what he was saying and that he had not really understood the implications of the treaty that he attempts to defend today.
	The treaty represents failure—a massive failure of political will, a total failure of negotiating wit and a complete failure to keep the promises that the Government made to the British people in what, morally, was a binding manifesto commitment to submit the treaty to a referendum. The treaty is a duplicitous document, as has readily been admitted in the media by the author of the constitution, Mr. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the former Italian Prime Minister and the Belgian Foreign Minister. They have all claimed that the treaty is designed to be "illisible", "illeggibile" and whatever the Flemish is for deliberately unintelligible gobbledygook.

Alan Duncan: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his astute clarification—double Dutch it indeed is.
	Blinding us with techno-babble is a deliberate ploy to obfuscate the real intentions behind the treaty, which are exactly the same as those of the constitution: gathering power into the centre of Brussels, removing flexibility and ignoring the voice of its citizens, and assuming all the rights of power, but without any of its democratic responsibilities. This is neither the outward-looking, flexible European project that we wish to see, nor the project that we were promised.
	Today it has fallen to us to examine the articles in the treaty that explicitly cover energy. In the spirit of the rest of the document, these sections are oblique, mysterious and evasive. Their very existence points to a murky process at the heart of Brussels which casts a shadow over the entire mechanism of decision making in the Commission, and, far more damaging, to the utter ineptitude represented by the Government's inability—in the phrase of one of my favourite Ministers, Lord Jones to Birmingham—to bang the drum for Britain.
	The Government have said that we need these articles to drive forward the liberalisation of the European energy market. That is a bogus argument, for one critical reason that we have already touched on today: the European Commission already has the legal base on which to make progress on liberalisation, contained in the single-market provisions and in the 40 or 50 existing directives on energy.

Alan Duncan: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. As a former Minister, he knows the argument inside out. What he and I are trying to say was confirmed in June last year by the legal service of the Council of Ministers, which stated its opinion that
	"according to the Court"
	—that is, the European Court of Justice—
	"this principle"
	—of supremacy—
	"is inherent to the specific nature of the European Community".
	As was pointed out earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper), what is so supremely unconvincing about the Government's position is that they themselves attempted to water down the boundary quite vigorously during the early stages of the negotiations. The right hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain), who as Minister for Europe was our main negotiator, lobbied to amend the treaty's definition of "shared competence" so that when the EU had acted—these were his proposed words—
	"Member States shall respect the obligations imposed on them by the relevant Union measures".
	That, in Euro-babble, means that it would have encroached less on our sovereignty. It was a very reasonable amendment which would not have precluded the action of individual member states, but the Government failed to amend the text. We are now lumbered with the deeply regrettable fact, as defined in the treaty, that member states cannot legislate if the EU has done so first, which jeopardises our ability to act independently on energy matters.
	Undoubtedly the most unsettling part of the text is in article 100, which reads:
	"Without prejudice to any other procedures provided for in the Treaties, the Council, on a proposal from the Commission, may decide, in a spirit of solidarity between Member States, upon the measures appropriate to the economic situation, in particular if severe difficulties arise in the supply of certain products, notably in the area of energy."
	That is a pretty extraordinary part of the treaty, and I shall return to it in a little more detail later.
	The final surprise is the insertion of an entirely new article on energy—article 176 A, for those who are following this in their primers—which establishes an EU energy policy. It will allow the EU,
	"In the context of the establishment and functioning of the internal market and with regard for the need to preserve and improve the environment",
	to pass laws in four key areas: ensuring the functioning of the market; ensuring security of supply; promoting energy efficiency, saving and renewables; and promoting the interconnection of energy networks. In that, the United Kingdom has no power of veto. The laws pass through co-decision, including qualified majority voting in the Council. Our Government have essentially written a blank cheque to Brussels, which could in certain circumstances oblige the United Kingdom, for example, to assist in the building of other member states' energy infrastructure, or even to supply them with energy during times of emergency.

Alan Duncan: The hon. Gentleman completely misunderstands the treaty, because that is a supplementary, additional provision, not something that qualifies what I have just asserted. It is not question of either/or, but of an extra "and". The fact that the hon. Gentleman does not understand that shows the problems that we get into when this House scrutinises European legislation so poorly. We get ministerial guarantees, and a few years later, judgments come at us down the track that we were told would never come our way. That is why people get so angry about the way in which European legislation—

Peter Luff: This is one of the central issues. With respect to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), I think that he is wrong. This is a serious and worrying power. I hope that in unusual circumstances we would do what is right to protect the overall economy of Europe, but we know how to do that. We do not need it mandated to us by the European Union. That is what this power does. The article contains the words
	"upon the measures appropriate to the economic situation".
	That is quite a broad-ranging power. It is not restricted to terrorism, as the Secretary of State suggested. It is an unnecessary transfer of power, but we should retain national discretion as to what we think is right in the appropriate circumstances.

John Hutton: As I understand it, the hon. Gentleman's argument is based on a lot of ifs, buts and maybes. Perhaps it would be helpful to him if I clarified one point to which he has mistakenly alluded a number of times in his speech. The measures under article 176A, to which the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) has referred, that maintain full member state control over the exploitation of national energy resources would have primacy over any power under qualified majority voting to maintain the functioning of the market. The hon. Gentleman has not addressed that and has failed to acknowledge the status of article 176. In relation to his point about implied competence, I take it from what he has said that the future of any renegotiation of our membership of the European Union under a possible Conservative Government would depend upon those fundamentals being renegotiated as well. How does he think that will allow him to work more closely with the European Union on energy liberalisation in future?

Stuart Bell: I am grateful for the opportunity to appear for the first time in these debates on the European Union. They coincide with the 400th anniversary of the writing of the authorised version of the Bible under King James. Listening to some of the contributions and interventions, I have the feeling that if those authors in Jerusalem Chambers had been making similar points, they would probably still be sitting there, 400 years on.
	It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan), who has considerable experience of the energy markets, although it might be some time since he gave up working in them to enter politics. Perhaps the world has moved on since then. He spoke of the Government's position on this paper being oblique, mysterious and evasive. He also cited Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, and I must reveal my age by telling the House that I had lunch with Giscard d'Estaing at Chamallières on the day he became President of France in 1974. Listening to the various references to him over the past few months has given me indigestion, although that indigestion has been delayed for some 30 years. Most of the comments on Giscard d'Estaing from the Conservatives have been self-serving, and they consistently overlook the fact that he has said that, while the treaty was about 80 per cent. similar, the red lines organised and agreed to by the British Government make it a different treaty. I shall not be tempted to explore whether this is the same or a different treaty, because if I did, I, like the authors of the King James Bible, would still be here many years from now.
	The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton made a number of points, which I am trying to assimilate. The one thing that strikes me when I listen to Conservative Members in this debate is that they give the impression that we must be a very small nation state with about 3 million citizens and have no say whatever on what happens in the European Union. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), who is no longer in his place, made reference to that. In a speech in Quebec, Winston Churchill said of the Germans:
	"What kind of people do they think we are?"
	What kind of people do the Conservatives think we are when we are dealing with the European Union? We are not softies, and we are not here to be pushed over. We are here to play a significant role in the European Union. That is what this amending treaty is about and what we are about.

Stuart Bell: I do not think that Sir Winston Churchill was talking about the European Union in 1942, but he did say that the price of freedom was "eternal vigilance". I would commend such vigilance to the Conservative party in looking at this treaty, as vigilance has certainly been given another meaning in these debates.
	The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton also talked about the sufficiency of the powers in existing treaties. He said that they were sufficient, but the fact is that it is rather like driving a car at 70 mph: if we take the foot off the accelerator, the car will slow down over a period of time. There are now 27 member states in the European Union, so it cannot be governed entirely on the basis of existing treaties. That has been looked into very carefully by many people, including many experts, which is why the amending treaty is before us now.
	The hon. Gentleman amused the House—I am not sure whether he intended to—when he spoke about gas rationing from Bavaria to Birmingham. He also referred to gas from Milford Haven but, as he will know, it is supplied from Qatar. At the risk of extending this debate, can you imagine, Mr. Deputy Speaker, having to tell the Government of Qatar that instead of their vessels on the high seas going to Milford Haven, they should be diverted to Bavaria?  [Interruption.] I am trying to be courteous, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in the face of some of the oddest and most ridiculous arguments I have ever heard put forward in the House. I will nevertheless try hard to stay courteous. The hon. Gentleman knows because of his experience in the Gulf that such a fanciful suggestion has absolutely no meaning at all.
	Reference was also made from the Back Benches to the shortages in 1972. By my reckoning, that is some 35 or 36 years ago. The right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) needs to know that that was before we even joined the Europe Union. The hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor), who I am glad to see is still in his place, talked about solidarity. He rightly pointed out that solidarity is in the national interest. We have no interest whatever in not being "solidaire", if I may use the French word, with the European Union. What kind of country are we to be if we cannot be solidaire with our European partners in this interconnected world?

Stuart Bell: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and I agree entirely with what he says.
	The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton made much of the phrase "undistorted competition" and the fact that President Sarkozy had wished to modify it in the present treaty. He also made scathing—or passing—references to the protocol, quoting what President Sarkozy said. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, with his wide reading, will have got round to studying the report of Jacques Attali on the state of the French economy, which calls for free competition and the opening up of the French economy, and which has been accepted by President Sarkozy. He will see a modified attitude towards competition within the European Union and beyond. It should also be noted that President Sarkozy was opposed to entry negotiations with Turkey on certain chapters, but when he became President, he quietly dropped that opposition.

Stuart Bell: I think I answered that point a few moments ago when the hon. Gentleman was briefly absent from the Chamber. We have not given any powers away to the EU. We have pooled our sovereignty and our competences, and we have done so in our national interests and in the interests of the EU as a concept and an ethos.
	We have also discussed nuclear energy. The Secretary of State referred to that; the hon. Member for Croydon, South (Richard Ottaway) intervened, and the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor), my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mrs. Curtis-Thomas) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, West (Ms Hewitt) all had a little nibble at the issue. France and Finland will expand their nuclear energy, and the Commission declared in its energy policy for Europe that more than half the member states use nuclear energy, and that nuclear energy provides some 30 per cent. of their electricity. Decisions in this area are left to member states, as this House learned when dealing with the Energy Bill. I should, however, make the obvious point, which has to be pointed out time and again, that nuclear power does not cause carbon emissions. Therefore, it is part of the environment-friendly programme of this Government and the EU.
	The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton talked about France. Nuclear power in France produces 75 per cent. of its electricity, and nuclear power has made France the largest electricity exporter in the EU. The UK's nuclear energy debate is coming to an end with discussion on the Energy Bill but, as has been pointed out, new nuclear power stations will have a role to play in the UK's future energy mix, alongside other low-carbon sources. In the public interest, energy companies will be allowed the option of investing in new nuclear power stations, and we should take the steps necessary to facilitate that. As the Secretary of State said in response to an intervention, nuclear is not the whole answer, and the energy White Paper sets out the measures being taken to enable us to become more energy-efficient and increase the supply of energy from low- carbon sources. Nuclear energy can contribute positively to the energy mix.
	Sadly, debate on energy has for a long time been neglected within the EU. That is why the Commission President Barroso declared on 20 November 2006 that energy had been a forgotten subject that was not on the Union agenda, but that now it is back on the agenda and is also at the heart of European integration. That should be understood against a background of energy demand growing within the global economy at the same time as energy sources are being depleted. World electricity demand is expected to double by 2030—overall global energy demand will grow by 53 per cent. between 2007 and 2030.
	The Union has so far enjoyed energy sufficiency at competitive prices and supplies from a variety of sources. Like the United States, the Union is a net energy importer, with 50 per cent. coming from outside the Union, rising to 70 per cent. in the next 20 to 30 years, yet member states must compete with other nations in world markets to secure supplies. It must be said that member states are unlikely to run out of energy in the next 50 years, but that does not lessen the obligation to plan for the worst while hoping for the best, as former President John Fitzgerald Kennedy once said. We have to plan for conflict and for supply interruption—the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton touched on that. We must also plan for price variations; the Secretary of State commented on that, as did the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink).
	It is against that background that we can debate article 176A of the amending treaty. It addresses the framework of the internal market and acknowledges the need to secure energy supplies as well as to preserve and improve the environment. It states that the Union's aim is
	"a spirit of solidarity between Member States"
	to
	"ensure the functioning of the energy market",
	the promotion of "energy efficiency" and
	"the interconnection of energy networks."
	As the Government's document "Global Europe: full-employment Europe" acknowledged in referring to the spring European Council meeting of May 2007—also referred to by the Secretary of State—the Union leaders signed up to an ambitious package of climate change and energy proposals with the objective of putting the Union on the path to becoming the world's first competitive, energy-secure and low-carbon economy. The goal of the Union must be to create an energy policy that provides energy-supply security and efficiency, assists in the reduction of carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases and links in with the Lisbon agenda. It is necessary to provide a competitive framework for the new technologies in the eco-industry that will not only enable the consumer to reduce their carbon footprint, but do so at reasonable cost.
	Notwithstanding all that is said by opponents of the amending treaty, the paradox is that the goals of energy security, environmental protection and the fulfilment of the Lisbon agenda can only come about through the action of member states. That is made clear in article 176A of the amending treaty, which was, again, referred to by the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton. There is no single market in energy . The market indeed lies with each member state. That was touched on by the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) when he referred on Second Reading to the gas contract that Bulgaria has entered into with Russia. My hon. Friend the Member for Crosby also referred to Russia in an intervention on the Secretary of State. I shall discuss Russia in a moment.
	There are structural differences in the way in which member states fulfil their market requirements, and although the Union may lay down rules and regulations, how to operate them is a matter for each member state. It is true that the Commission has investigative powers within its competition competence, and that it has initiated legal proceedings in Germany against alleged infringements—I refer to the case of four electricity and generator suppliers. Any proposal to commit to further liberalisation of the gas and electricity markets of the Union could be led only by the Union, and member states would have to follow. The challenge for the Union is to urge member states along in the interests of the broader Union and in their own interests. That is the purpose of article 176A; it aims to provide a framework to those ends.
	The Union must meet its own increasing energy demand and match that with its intended constraints to safeguard the environment. Such measures include: reducing carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions; developing hybrid cars to consume more biofuel; developing renewable energy; and, of course, resolving the debate on nuclear power. To return again to the comments made by the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon, much is often made about security of supplies when it comes to Russia. I believe that was also touched on by the hon. Members for Rutland and Melton and for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff). The question is whether too much dependence is involved in dealing with suppliers from Russia. Is the Union's dependence on Russia to the detriment of the Union?
	The Union's policy towards Russia is one not of dependence, but of interdependence. José Manuel Barroso has declared that interdependency is for the mutual benefit of both Russia and the Union, and that it requires transparency, the rule of law, reciprocity, non-discrimination and a level playing field in terms of market opening, market access and competition. In other words, interdependence means that the Union relies on Russia for a major part of its energy supply, and Russia sees foreign currency receipts from that and its trade with the European Union contributing some 40 per cent. of the Russian budget.
	However, interdependence goes beyond energy supply. The Union is Russia's major trading partner—bilateral trade reached €96.55 billion in 2004. More than 60 per cent. of Russian export revenue comes from energy—most from exports to the Union. That is true interdependence. The Union has therefore every interest in deepening its relations with Russia and maintaining its access to oil and gas through long-term contracts, facilitating security of supply, which is so paramount to the Union's industrial efforts. I have cited Winston Churchill once, and I am happy to do so again. He said that dreams are good, but facts are better. The fact is that Russia has 27 per cent. of the world's known gas reserves, in addition to its oil reserves.
	Of course, the Union imports from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries and has established a formal dialogue to improve communication about prices, supplies and investment. In 2003, some 23 per cent. of the Union's gas came from Russia, whereas Algeria provided 30 per cent. and Norway 25 per cent. That was also mentioned by the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton and my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham). Algeria is a reliable and traditional supplier that enjoys a strategic energy partnership with the Union. I am glad that delegates from the Algerian Parliament will visit the UK Parliament, through the auspices of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, at the end of February.
	The Government's policy and the amending treaty link energy policy and trade policy. The Union's aim is to integrate Algeria fully in the Union's internal market, and thus double its gas supplies to the Union. The Union has also signed an agreement with Ukraine to co-operate not only on nuclear safety, but on the integration of electricity and gas markets. The Union seeks to improve environmental standards in Ukraine's coal sector, and agreements have been signed with Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. The Foreign Secretary's Bruges speech on 15 November followed in the august footsteps of the noble Baroness Thatcher. He called for an "environmental Union" and for the Union to be a "model power" in the 21st century. He also wanted it to be a low-carbon power.
	There should be some unity across the Floor of the House on the following at least: an energy policy linked to a reduction in carbon emissions; a 20 or 30 per cent. reduction from a base year of 1990, with a longer-term goal of reducing emissions to less than 50 per cent. of 1990 levels by 2050; and all that being linked to sustainable development and poverty reduction, doing one's best for the environment and marrying that with energy security.
	The Union spoke with one voice at the Bali conference in December in its search for a replacement for the Kyoto protocol. It gave world leadership to achieve these reductions in greenhouse gases. The Prime Minister added to that when he reported back from the European Council meeting in December. He said:
	"Europe must also step up funding, including funding through the World Bank, to help the developing world to shift to lower carbon growth and adapt to climate change."—[ Official Report, 17 December 2007; Vol. 469, c. 597.]
	On Second Reading, the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon quoted from Milton's "Paradise Lost". The European Union is not a paradise lost, but nor is it a paradise found. Whatever the views of right hon. and hon. Members of this House, the Union is here to stay. Europe has had centuries of fluctuating history, with its plagues, pestilence and wars, but now it has peace, prosperity and unity in diversity. The Union has chosen the path of civilisation, progress and prosperity, seeking to apply that to all its citizens. The hon. Member for Stone does not seem to think it a wise principle to follow civilisation, progress and prosperity. Perhaps he will give me an alternative.

Stuart Bell: I must tell the hon. Gentleman that the Union flag has more stars than the red flag had.
	Let us return to civilisation, progress and prosperity. The Union has sought to apply that notion to all its citizens, rich and poor and healthy and sick, including the weakest and most deprived. It seeks a liberal economy that does not conflict with, but is compatible with, a social model. I believe that those words come from the preamble, which is often derided across the Floor of the House, including from those on my own Back Benches.
	The quotation cited by the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon brought to mind a quote from Henry David Thoreau, which I first heard from the lips of George Kennan during his 1957 Reith lectures—I said that I would be giving my age away during this contribution. He said:
	"there is no ill which may not be dissipated, like the dark, if you let in a stronger light upon it, but if the light you use is but a narrow and paltry taper most objects shall cast a shadow wider than themselves."
	It is to be hoped that the Government, in choosing these debates, such as this one on energy, by subject matter, will cast a stronger and better light on the operation of the Union, which is there for the benefit of all our citizens, now and in the future.

Mark Harper: Can the hon. Gentleman address the question that the Secretary of State did not deal with satisfactorily? We already have the powers necessary for a liberalised energy market. Indeed, the Government extolled the virtues of the liberalisation introduced by that great woman, Baroness Thatcher, in the Single European Act. What will this treaty enable us to do in liberalising the energy market that we cannot do already?

Steve Webb: There is a hierarchy of issues. Even the hon. Gentleman will accept that some policies are best determined by local government, some by national Governments and some by pan-European bodies. Horses for courses. I have no problem with saying that energy policy requires a co-operative element, which is why the European Union has an important role to play.

Patricia Hewitt: I have no doubt that we can achieve a substantial increase in that regard, especially through the use of wind power. The UK is blessed with wind resources, and we also have some of the world's leading technology companies—something that I should have thought the hon. Gentleman would welcome.

Peter Luff: I regard this as having been a rather unsatisfactory debate. I managed largely to avoid the debates on the Maastricht treaty, although sadly I was once called by the Whips to make a filibustering speech lamenting the then Opposition's wasting of time during the debates—there was a certain irony to that, although I managed to discharge my duty with reasonable decorum.
	I find it unsatisfactory that we should be having a Second Reading debate on energy policy which lasts for four and a half hours, followed by a Committee stage that lasts for one and a half hours. My understanding is that things would normally be the other way round: normally a Committee stage lasts three or more times as long as Second Reading. We have it the wrong way round. It is a shame that it has taken more than three hours for the first Opposition Back Bencher—and I am not only a Back Bencher, but the Chairman of a Select Committee—to make their first contribution.
	Having said that, I am delighted to follow the right hon. Member for Leicester, West (Ms Hewitt). I did not agree with everything that she said—particularly her concluding remarks—but it is good to see a former Secretary of State for Trade and Industry using her skill and expertise and coming back to participate in debates. The right hon. Lady set a model for other former Cabinet Ministers in joining us in that way and showing herself to be a true parliamentarian, and I thank her for that.
	There is another unsatisfactory aspect of the debate. We waited more than a year for a debate on energy policy, and then, rather like London buses, two came along together. We had an energy debate last week, we are having another this week, and the Minister of State and I are to have a third opportunity to catch the bus tomorrow, when the Minister will attend a sitting of my Committee to discuss energy prices and generating capacity. I am sure that many of these issues will be dealt with again in detail and in a very congenial forum, and a fine job I am sure the Minister will do of it.
	So far in today's debate there has genuinely been little disagreement about the objectives that we all share. It has been very much a debate about mechanisms, which has made it slightly frustrating in many ways. I must tell the Secretary of State and the Minister that I am concerned about the provisions in the treaty, although not for the reasons identified by the right hon. Member for Leicester, West and certainly not for the reasons offered by the Secretary of State in his opening remarks. He suggested that the treaty was some kind of proxy for opposition to the European Union itself, and some kind of cover for a wish to withdraw from it.
	I believe that the Government were once opposed to these provisions. They had sound, well-argued reasons for opposing precisely the provisions that they now ask us to endorse. It is a shame that they lost the negotiations on the issue, because their negotiating position was the right one for the country, but sadly they abandoned it, which is why we are in the position in which we find ourselves today.
	As for my own position, it is simply this: ever-closer union must have its limits. There are some matters that all Members, however Europhile they may be, do not believe should be transferred to the competence at the centre. The limit must come somewhere. The question is where we should draw the line, and my contention is that in the case of energy policy the line pre-Lisbon was drawn in about the right place. I believe that the treaty pushes it a bit too far.
	Why does this matter so much? All Select Committee Chairmen think that their subjects are the most important to the country, and I genuinely believe that energy policy is one of the two most important issues that the country faces. The other, for my money, is probably skills, in which we have some competence in another Department. Those are the two key issues involving United Kingdom competitiveness, and hence the United Kingdom's future ability to pay its way in the world and our long-term security.
	Mercifully skills are not in any sense a European Union competence, and I think that that is the answer that the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) should have given when he was challenged on the point earlier. Skills are an example of the competences that we believe should remain firmly in this country.  [Interruption.] Perhaps there was no specific suggestion to the contrary, but it is a good example nevertheless, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman would have endorsed that view in any event.
	We are debating the interrelatedness of energy policy and the European Union. What is also common ground between us is that there is no way in which British energy policy can be separated from European energy policy. It cannot be, and it should not be. In fact, when I write to my constituents urging withdrawal from the European Union, I cite energy policy as a reason for not doing so. Our ability to influence the European market in gas and, in particular, electricity depends on our membership of the European Union, and it is therefore absolutely in our interests to engage in energy policy. There can be no debate about that; the debate must be about how we are to engage in that policy.
	The question I want to ask is "Do we need any new powers and competences at all?" A thought at the back of my mind suggests that we might, and I wish that we were debating it now. I think it was my colleague on the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Angus, who made the point about French and German national champions, and listed other countries with a chauvinistic approach to energy policy. It is certainly true that the conduct of British energy policy is shaped very heavily by the aggressive chauvinism of, particularly, the French and the Germans. There is no doubt that the European Commission, in its magnificent battles with the national champions in the rest of Europe, is encountering a great deal of resistance to the liberalisation of the European markets that is so much in Britain's interests. It is possible that we need new powers to deal with that, but I do not think we do.

Michael Weir: Is it not the crux of the new powers in the treaty the interlinking of the issues of energy security and liberalisation given the attitudes of, for example, the French and German Governments, who exert huge influence on their own energy companies?

Peter Luff: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The question that the House must seriously address is whether we need to pool new aspects of our sovereignty—to use the less controversial phrase of some of my hon. Friends—to achieve those objectives. I believe that existing powers are sufficient to deal with them, and we should be content to rely on them, rather than seeking new ones.

William Cash: I was interested in the exchange my hon. Friend had about the French and German position. Is he aware that this week, France and Germany will seek to prevent a forced break-up of their power companies when they unveil a joint initiative, as reported in the  Financial Times? It is precisely that problem that we are up against. It is not just a problem for the European Commission, but for the global marketplace.

Claire Curtis-Thomas: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff). I might not agree with some of the sentiments that he has expressed, but he always speaks eloquently on this issue—no doubt as a result of his chairing the Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Committee.
	I have listened closely for the past four or five hours to the arguments from Opposition Front-Bench Members and other hon. Members who have tried to justify our rejecting article 192 in the consolidated texts of the EU treaties as amended by the treaty of Lisbon. I believe that the amended treaty merely recognises a need to reflect a developed understanding between existing and new member states, and reaffirms existing agreements. It also takes the opportunity to assert an unequivocal position on the promotion of energy efficiency and energy saving, and on the development of new and renewable forms of energy. It is this element of the reaffirmed energy policy that I wish to discuss today.
	First, I want to refer to the recent announcement by my hon. Friend the Minister for Energy. As his White Paper on nuclear power and the Lisbon treaty unequivocally state, human-caused climate change is in large part due to huge emissions of carbon dioxide. As a result, we have a moral as well as an expanding economic duty to begin converting our industries, homes and means of transportation to more environmentally friendly technologies. The House of Commons has a duty and a responsibility to debate the merits of nuclear, wind and coal power in Britain. It might be politically risky or inopportune to suggest higher energy costs in the short term, but we must consider that a down-payment on a much brighter future. That has certainly been the case for some of our renewable resources.
	We owe it to our children, and to their children, to blaze a trail to greater environmental and ecological well-being, but also to keep Britain competitive and current in the European and world economies. New technology undoubtedly offers a great market opportunity for British-based companies. Making a change to nuclear power, as the Government have proposed, will undoubtedly incur short-run costs.
	The recent White Paper estimated that assessing designs and location strategies, licensing new plants and establishing an application process will not take place until 2013, well before the construction of new nuclear plants can begin. During that time, spending on these plants will be condemned and lambasted by Opposition parties, rendering the nuclear plan a significant political liability. However, it is essential that we follow this path, but we must never under any circumstances underestimate or undervalue our desire and our need to develop other technologies.
	The Stern review of 2006 concluded that up to 1 per cent. of the world's gross domestic product should be invested each year to mitigate the worst effects of global climate change by restricting the release of greenhouse gases. The catastrophic result of saying that we will take care of it later is not simply that exotic plants and animals will die; according to Stern, global GDP will eventually suffer the immense consequences of climate change as a result of severe weather, including hurricanes, wind and flooding. Stern concluded that if we begin acting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by increasing renewable energy sources, further capping the emissions of coal plants and increasing the usage of nuclear power, we will save money later in the century. Making sacrifices now will create a much better situation in future. I believe that the UK must take a lead so it can guide its allies in America, India, China and the developing nations on these policies.
	I turn now to the challenge that faces us all in relation to the promotion of energy efficiency, energy saving and the development of new and renewable forms of energy. So many of my constituents—

Claire Curtis-Thomas: I am dealing now with the promotion of energy efficiency, which is covered in article 197C. Some of my constituents would expect the treaty to consolidate energy security and trading markets, but that is not the main subject that focuses their minds. They want to know how we are going to use this treaty to tackle climate change, and I believe that that desire is strongest among the youngest members of our society. Schoolchildren in my constituency and members of my own family are greatly focused on that particular aspect of this particular treaty. We often talk about how Parliament can engage young people and it is clear that this is a very relevant platform for them—one that I wish to express on their behalf.
	It is this generation of young people who will without doubt have to confront the serious consequences of climate change. It is not just the young people of Europe whose lives will be affected in an unprecedented way as a result of energy utilisation. The children of developing nations such as Sierra Leone, for example—many of whom live without any energy, light or heat for cooking or manufacturing—are likely to bear the consequences of excess energy utilisation today.
	I know that the development of new and renewable forms of energy provision in the treaty will do more than just drive new technologies within the EU—in respect of which we will inevitably take a lead—as the significant investment will greatly assist developing nations that have very little access to energy sources within their countries now. We need to share with them our knowledge as well as the products of this new element in the treaty. It seems so utterly unfair that we constrain the energy utilisation of emerging countries because we have become only too well aware of the impact of unconstrained use in our own. We have to do all we can not just to find ways to generate the energy, but to be far more creative in respect of conserving the energy we have already produced. That will require technological innovations and significant public information and educational programmes, which I hope will flow from the new treaty.
	Young people must be made aware of the importance of combating climate change. Although many of my local schools have taken their own initiatives on that, climate change is not covered in the primary or secondary curricula, except for a very small intervention in geography subjects.

Ian Taylor: I shall be brief, as I know that other Opposition Members wish to contribute, and in the interests of having a balanced debate, I shall try to give them sufficient time to do so.
	I support the insertion of the energy element in the new treaty, as I have long argued that energy was insufficiently covered in existing arrangements, and having a more common EU energy policy is becoming an issue of increasing UK national importance.
	Many contributions to the debate reflect the self-confidence that has come from decades of energy self-sufficiency in this country, but the reality is that we are now rapidly getting into a state of energy insecurity. It is interesting that a consultancy firm, Inenco, says that the number of nuclear and coal plants coming out of service over the next few years make shortages likely. It believes that demand will overtake supply some time between 2012 and 2015, creating a serious generation gap. As I hope there will be a Conservative Government at that time, we should deal with this matter quickly.
	Although I support the desire to have new nuclear power stations, they will not by themselves fill the gap because they will not be ready in time. It is right that the Government are encouraging them by providing regulatory and support frameworks for investment in nuclear power stations, and I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) has supported the Government in that. However, we face a problem, which is shared by most other EU countries, although the extent of the problem differs: there is within the EU an increasing dependence on imported energy. Rather than have a "beggar my neighbour" attitude—that is, by and large, the attitude of Members who wish there to be no more pooling of sovereignty or community engagement—we should have a constructive approach.
	That is increasingly important in the context of the world energy situation and how some of our energy is increasingly supplied. The African position is worrying for the EU as a whole. It is true that Algeria is one of the largest suppliers of its own energy to Europe, but let us consider the situation across the African continent. There is now very strong Chinese investment in, for example, energy in Angola, and the recent Gazprom negotiations in Nigeria cause serious concern about the future of the Nigerian energy supply. Uncertainties are arising, and they need to be discussed at European level.
	The increasing dependence on Russia, which has been mentioned by several hon. Members, should give a pause for concern. About 25 per cent. of our energy comes from Russia, but that figure will rise to 40 per cent. by 2030, according to the Commission's figures. It is difficult to know exactly what will happen. Interestingly, Russia is the second biggest producer and exporter of oil—after Saudi Arabia. It accounts for about 12 per cent. of global production, although it has only 6 per cent. of global oil reserves, so there are a few questions marks over its continuing prosperity. There is no doubt but that Russia's ability to generate huge capital reserves because its energy is being sold at elevated prices means it will dictate much of what will happen over the next few years. Given all those circumstances, we need to deal with energy coherently at the European Union level.

Adam Holloway: Does my hon. Friend agree that the treaty could have an effect on concerns about energy security, particularly in eastern European countries, and could therefore be used in such a way that the UK would lose control of its own energy stocks in an emergency?

Ian Taylor: I disagree with my hon. Friend. The treaty may make it more likely that we do not lose that control.
	The situation is cause for concern because Russia is picking off individual members of the former Soviet Union and doing some alarmingly worrying deals. The Baltic states are very susceptible to that influence. A different deal with Bulgaria has just been done, and it too is of concern. It involves both Gazprom and the approval of a particular pipeline that has been mentioned earlier. We should not be unaware that the Russians are determined to ensure that there is a single source supplier of energy—gas and oil—to Europe, and that the way the pipeline has been negotiated means that for a period of years, until we find some way of bypassing it, there could be a single source. That would mean that Russia would be able to pick off members of the European Union.
	I think everyone in this House agrees that the European Union cannot allow any one of its members to be influenced by an external country. That is one of the solidarity issues that we have agreed ever since we joined the European Union. As energy is now a security issue, the danger is that some of the former Soviet Union countries that are now part of the European Union could be very vulnerable to the Soviet tactics of the now-Russian Government. I do not wish to name a particular country, because to do so might draw too much attention to it, but one can use one's imagination as to which countries I am discussing. We therefore need to get our act together, and the main principles of the treaty and the changes in article 176A are crucial.

Ian Taylor: A lot of very worrying negotiations are going on, particularly as they affect Lithuania and Poland. They are therefore European Union matters in which we have an interest. That was one of the most helpful interventions my hon. Friend has ever made, because it confirmed my point that these are European Union matters rather than national matters. He is, of course, an expert on the treaty, but he does not always understand what he has said. Article 176A is crucial. Paragraph 1(a) states that the Union should aim to
	"ensure the functioning of the energy market".
	All four sub-paragraphs require the Commission to have strong powers, and if this treaty enforces the powers of the Commission, that is a very good thing.
	My hon. Friend raised the problems of the French and German desire to discourage unbundling.
	I shall quote the  Financial Times from Monday, in which the energy Commissioner stated:
	"Our main priority is that customers can choose and have an active role in the market. That will bring prices down. If you do not like your supplier you should be able to change."
	Bravo. A good Conservative like me believes strongly in an effective and powerful Commission, reinforced by the European Court of Justice, and including energy policy.
	Article 176 expresses the desire to
	"ensure security of energy supply in the Union".
	That is touched on in the points that I have just made.
	In an earlier intervention in the speech by the right hon. Member for Leicester, West (Ms Hewitt) I commented on the energy charter treaty that the Russians have signed and which has recently received much attention. I hope that the Minister will have another look at that treaty, because it raises considerable concerns about energy supply and the role of the Russians, especially Gazprom. They have signed the treaty, and that requires reciprocal arrangements, including investment and other characteristics of the energy market. As the treaty is in existence, we should hold the Russians to account and perhaps ask whether it would be right for them to be given easy entrance into the World Trade Organisation before starting to honour the treaties that they have signed. I draw the Minister's attention to early-day motion 798, in my name.
	If we are to achieve the aim of ensuring the security of energy supply in the European Union, we have to take collective action. Article 176 also states that Union policy will
	"promote energy efficiency and energy saving and the development of new and renewable forms of energy".
	We have had those discussions and I do not need to say more about that. It is clear that each nation will have a variety of choices in how it achieves that, and that is enshrined in the treaty as a national interest.
	We have to ensure that we meet our environmental objectives, and also diversify into reliable energy sources. I am all in favour of renewable energy, but I am not entirely certain that it will provide reliability of supply. I hope that the Minister will be challenged on that in the Select Committee, which is admirably led by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff).
	The article also says that EU energy policy will
	"promote the interconnection of energy networks".
	That is an important issue for the EU, because if there were a problem, the Union would have to intervene. Pipelines will be a cause of increasing concern. The threat to pipelines and supply touches on another useful clarification in the treaty, about the common foreign and security policy. That is not only an external issue—for example, but not uniquely, with Russia—but a domestic or even, one might say, a European homeland security issue. In a recent Government announcement, this country has already made it clear that companies will have to pay for the military to secure the gas outlets within the United Kingdom. That does not surprise me. Indeed, we will have to go further, and there will be more obligations.
	Security of gas and oil supply through pipelines in the European Union is a British national interest. If a pipeline somewhere else is blown up, it is a problem for us if it is part of our supply. Who protects Norway? We forget that the Russians are also encroaching around the Arctic circle, and any threat to Norwegian supply would be a grave problem for us.
	This debate, which is narrowly focused on energy, indicates just how important it is for this country to start to think positively about the role of the European Union. We cannot influence such matters on our own. We cannot afford breast-beating declarations that Britain is best, or that we must look after our national interest, as if that were a zero-sum game that excluded everybody else. We are in this together, and we are in a much more insecure world. We start increasingly from the position of a lack of control over sufficient energy supplies for ourselves. We are becoming a net importer, which increases the insecurity.
	I hope that the Minister will pick up some of those points and talk positively about the benefits of the Lisbon treaty. If he is not positive about them, no wonder the public at large are confused. The treaty is a good thing for the United Kingdom. Let us cut through the cant and understand that if we play the game properly, we can have disproportionate influence. Many other countries in the EU are looking to us for that leadership.

Michael Weir: It is fitting that energy forms part of our debate, given that the whole concept of the EU grew out of the European Coal and Steel Community, but energy is one of the less satisfactory areas of the European project and, to be frank, I do not think that the proposals in the treaty will do a great deal to improve the situation. European policy swirls around the concept of liberalising energy markets and the belief that such liberalisation will lead to a better deal for consumers, but, given the recent experience of UK consumers and the swingeing energy price rises that we have suffered in our so-called liberalised market, it is at least questionable whether we are getting any real benefit from it.
	It is often argued that one of the reasons for that is the non-liberalised nature of the European market and its interaction with the UK market, especially through the gas interconnector.  The Independent put it well when, on 8 January, it reported:
	"For their short-term supplies, companies on the Continent come to the liberalised UK market where the wholesale price is significantly less than the oil-indexed gas sold on the European market. Their short-term supplies met, the European groups then hoard their stored supplies, crimping demand and driving the price up further still."
	In other words, the actions of the major European suppliers mean that prices in the UK rise. We have heard today about moves to centralise further the European companies' hold on various markets.
	The purposes of the new energy provision, article 194, are to
	"ensure the functioning of the energy market...ensure security of energy supply in the Union...promote energy efficiency and energy saving and the development of new and renewable forms of energy"
	and
	"promote the interconnection of energy networks."
	None of us would have any great problem with any of that, and we certainly do not intend to oppose this part of the treaty—it is all very much motherhood and apple pie stuff. My difficulty is that although it all looks great on paper, what is actually happening in the EU seems to me to be somewhat different.
	The Commission has been trying for some years to liberalise the markets, and in September last year it produced its third liberalisation package. The proposals consist of four documents that would amend the existing gas and electricity legislation, and a fifth that would establish a new agency for co-operation among energy regulators. The Commission's aim is clearly to remove barriers to creating a fully functioning internal energy market, which it believes will ensure open and fair competition and effective regulation, leading to lower prices for European consumers in a single European electricity grid, which it wants to have in place by January 2009. I have already expressed scepticism about whether the liberalised market truly leads to lower prices, but the real fly in the ointment of the proposal is that the Commission wants to achieve a liberalised market using the mechanism of unbundling ownership—in effect, breaking up the vertically integrated energy companies that operate on the continent and having separate ownership of generation and transmission networks.
	That is all very well in theory, but as I pointed out earlier in an intervention, several of the large European states—France and Germany in particular—are dead set against that approach, because their idea of energy security is based on the concept of having national champions in the energy market through promotion of big vertically integrated energy companies with a large element of state ownership, or at least state influence. Electricité de France—EDF—is a classic example. There is a conflict in article 194 between the idea of security of supply and the idea of liberalisation of markets, because there is no definition of how we are to achieve security of supply, and there is a fundamental difference between the UK Government's approach and the approach favoured by France and Germany, for example. In passing, it is worth nothing that the UK Government see new nuclear power stations as important for future energy security, yet the company most likely to invest in them is one in which the major shareholder is the French Government.
	It is also highly unlikely that France and Germany will agree to ownership unbundling that reduces their Governments' influence over the internal energy markets. That is doomed to failure. When I put that to the Secretary of State, he said that qualified majority voting was the key, but at the end of July last year, not only France and Germany, but Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg and Slovakia sent a joint letter to the Commission arguing that ownership unbundling should be only one of a few options. Cyprus and Malta have also expressed additional fears about that. Even with qualified majority voting, we will be unlikely to get agreement on unbundling in that way.
	As is the case with all things European, it is likely that a compromise will eventually be reached. Hopefully, it will be along the lines of what is known as the Scottish solution, which operates by separating transmission operators while leaving the integrated companies. However, being European, who knows what will come out of all this? I am interested to hear what the UK Government's position on the energy market will be if the full unbundling option does not proceed. Are we in for many years of arguing about that before we come up with a compromise?
	The provisions of the treaty will not change things, because we could do much of what is proposed by using existing legislation. We might be putting those provisions on the face of the treaty, but it will not make a great deal of difference.
	I want to raise a specific point on article 194 and its relation to article 100. Much has been said about that, and the circumstances in which help would be given to other nations. I find many of the arguments somewhat bizarre. A great deal of concern has been raised about the position of Gazprom in the European market. It is active not only in the eastern part of the European Union, but also in the western part, where it has tried to buy up transmission capacity. Indeed, at one time it was looking at Centrica.
	As the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor) hinted, the article gives confidence to members of the EU in the east that the west will come to their aid if Russia, or Gazprom, tries to cut off their gas supplies. Members of the Select Committee on Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform—or on Trade and Industry, as it used to be called—who visited some of the eastern European countries during our investigation found clearly that that is, rightly, a serious concern for them. They see the EU as their anchor in democracy against Russia, but they are worried about the gas situation. The article is sensible because it gives them confidence that they will not be left out in the cold—no pun intended—if Gazprom does that.
	We had a brief diversion into biofuels. I remember speaking to a representative of a major oil company about the future of biofuels, and that person talked about second- generation biofuels—those that come not from palm oil or corn but from wood and wood offcuts. The representative said that they would be made in areas with large forests. Guess where that is going to be in Europe? Eastern Europe and Russia. So there is a potential problem with biofuels, too, if we do not get this right.
	No debate on energy would be complete, as I am sure the Minister will be delighted to hear, without a reference to our old friend transmission charges—something that I have discussed with him on the odd occasion. I have mentioned the discriminatory nature of transmission charges in the UK before, particularly with reference to renewable generators in Scotland. However, the subject also has a European dimension. If the Commission is serious about creating a European grid, the question of transmission charges throughout Europe will have to be addressed.
	Under the Commission's proposals, national regulators are given an obligation when fixing or approving tariffs to ensure that network operators are given incentives to foster market integration. Scottish and Southern Energy, among others, has pointed out that one of the key obstacles to effective market integration is the discontinuity in generator tariffs at national borders.
	The guidelines limit the maximum average generator charge, but that still leaves scope for massive discontinuities at national borders due to extreme locational tariffs in some member states. That is an important consideration in the UK, as the guidelines say that the average UK tariff should be €2.4 per megawatt-hour. The UK complies with that average, but that disguises a vast range of locational charging arrangements set by the national grid and approved by the regulator—in our case, by Ofgem.
	The European guidelines allow differentials, but state that a differential of €20 per kilowatt-hour would be an extreme example of locational pricing and a significant barrier to European trade. However, in the UK the difference between northern Scotland and southern England is more than €40 per kilowatt-hour—twice the extreme example cited by the European Union. If the treaty goes through, as I am sure it will, and the new electricity measures come into being, I look forward to the European Commission taking an interest in that extreme example of discriminatory pricing and overturning the UK Government's refusal to do anything about it.
	That subject is linked, too, to the new European decision on renewable energy generation. In an intervention, I mentioned the interesting fact that although the EU is now setting renewable generation targets for each member nation, there is a proposal for other countries to trade certificates of origin. That could lead to a great deal of trading of renewable energy. That could be a huge benefit, particularly in Scotland, because of the potential for renewable generation. I look forward with interest to seeing how it will be implemented in the UK.
	I realise that time is running out, and so I shall bring my speech to a close. It seems to me that much of the debate about European energy before the treaty was presented to us was about who should set energy policy—Brussels or London. In our view, both are wrong. Scottish energy policy should be controlled from Edinburgh.

Mark Harper: I shall of necessity be brief and raise just one or two points. The first is directly relevant to article 176A(d) of the treaty, and concerns the promotion of the interconnection of energy networks. One point that will be keenly felt by my constituents concerns the pipeline from Milford Haven to the national gas grid. One of my concerns is that we should ensure that local people's influence on the way in which those energy networks are put together should not be downgraded. The Minister for Energy will know that his boss, the Secretary of State, recently turned down an above-ground installation on that pipeline following an inspector's report. That was an important battle which was keenly fought by my constituents. They would not want to feel that their ability to influence the way in which those networks were put together was damaged by the treaty and its provisions.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff), Chairman of the Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Committee, pointed out that the Government's negotiating position initially was that they did not want these provisions. They felt that they were unnecessary and argued against them. Now, they are arguing in favour of them. I do not necessarily agree with all the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor), but he did a better job of arguing in favour of the treaty than the Secretary of State.
	I have two questions for the Minister who will wind up the debate. First, reference was made to the clearer legal basis for liberalising markets, but how will the treaty deliver that? My second question will be of interest to all our constituents: what assessment have the Government made of the treaty's effect on energy prices here in the UK, as well as in other parts of the EU? The UK already has the most liberalised energy market, so it is not clear how liberalising markets elsewhere will help our constituents. It would be very helpful if the Minister could respond to that.

Charles Hendry: The hon. Gentleman says that there are too many to choose from, but he could not come up with one during the debate. The second problem that he had was with clarifying his party's nuclear policy. The Liberal Democrats say, "No nuclear power here, but yes, please, we'll import as much as we can through the interconnector from France." It is a fundamentally hypocritical position. They do not want nuclear power here but are happy to use cheap French nuclear power and leave the French to deal with decommissioning and waste disposal.
	The key issue in this debate is whether it is right to give the European Union greater powers to determine energy flows in times of crisis. It is a question not of interpretation of the treaty but of a fundamental and genuine difference of opinion. The change suggested is to allow the Council of Ministers the power to divert energy supplies from one country to another if it deemed it necessary in a time of crisis, and because the issue would be decided under QMV the country concerned would not be able to resist the change. It is quite legitimate for some to argue that that is the right thing to do, but overwhelmingly we Opposition Members fundamentally disagree, and that alone is grounds for a referendum.
	I ask Government Members not to misinterpret us. We are not saying that the United Kingdom Government should not help other countries that are facing an energy crisis—we have a great history as a generous nation that carries out its international responsibilities well—but it should be up to our Government and other sovereign Governments acting independently to decide whether it is right to give other countries that help. We should not be forced to do so. When my hon. Friend the Chairman of the Select Committee asked the Secretary of State to clarify the circumstances in which that might happen, the Secretary of State could not do so. He basically said, "Somebody will give you an answer on that later." So much for line-by-line scrutiny. It is simply not happening in this debate.
	Ours is not a selfish little England position; we believe that it is right for every country to have the relevant powers. That works both ways. Two years ago, when this country was short of gas—and just after the Minister for Energy said that we were awash with gas—we discovered that France was not, as we had hoped, exporting gas through the interconnector, as it is legally obliged to keep a certain amount of gas in storage for its own domestic use. Under the treaty, France could be obliged to overrule its national laws and export gas even if it does not wish to do so. It would be interesting to see that issue at the heart of a French referendum.
	The treaty's approach will penalise countries that have invested in long-term energy security. We in this country are belatedly making the investment needed to improve our gas security—we are investing in new pipelines, liquefied natural gas facilities and better gas storage facilities—but it would be quite wrong for our gas supplies to be diverted to support another country that had not taken such responsible measures unless our Government had the absolute right to decide whether to allow it.
	During this debate, there has been much discussion about what will happen and could happen. Whenever the Minister for Europe has been in the Chamber, he has scoffed from the Front Bench every time the word "could" has been used, but it is quite right that we in this House should look at what could happen under the treaty. The reason why many people in this country are so disillusioned with the European Union is that they are constantly told that each treaty and new measure means one thing, but they then discover a little while down the line that it means a whole lot of other things that they were never told about. It is therefore quite right for our debate to focus on the powers that the treaty could confer. We have no legal definition of a crisis or of solidarity. The British people need to know that under the treaty, our economic security could be put at risk to solve an energy problem elsewhere in the European Union.
	The other big issue in this debate is liberalisation. I agree with the hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Weir) that the further measures proposed in the treaty are not necessary to take forward the liberalisation of European energy markets. The Secretary of State has not given us any evidence that the European Union does not currently have the power to move forwards with liberalisation. After years of no progress, we are now seeing at least some progress on the uncompetitive practices in use elsewhere in Europe. It seems bizarre that we should need a new treaty just when the European Union is beginning to show that it has real teeth.
	The treaty moves us in the wrong direction. It will remove the reference to undistorted competition, just because that suits France. It is to the shame of our Ministers that we have given in to demands arising purely from the narrow, nationalistic interest of one other country involved.
	So let us be clear: we want energy security; we want to cut carbon and we want a realistic price on carbon; we want a growth in renewables; and we want more done on fuel poverty. As we move through the Energy Bill, we will be taking the lead on those issues, and I hope that the Government will respond to the amendment that we tabled.
	The Secretary of State said in his opening speech that we are out of touch. It is strange that he says so, when we are pushing for exactly the same changes as Ministers previously called for. Let us put the matter to the test. Let us see whether we or the Government are out of touch. Let us put it to a referendum.

Mark Francois: The Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee asked whether we agreed with "any measures", and that is a question in principle. The answer in principle is that we do not agree with "any measures"; we are here to debate the detail of the treaty line by line. The Chairman attempts to inveigle me, but he will have to forgive me if I do not walk into his little trap. I will say, however, that I do agree with the conclusion of the Committee's other report that, on foreign affairs, the constitution and the Lisbon treaty were almost exactly the same.
	The treaty's provisions on energy sum up much of what is wrong with the treaty as a whole. The provisions are unneeded and unwanted, and their presence is testimony to the Government's utter ineptitude at negotiating in the EU. The provisions offer no benefit to this country and neither we nor our European partners would be harmed by their rejection. They only have the potential to harm, and that is why we have tabled the amendment to reject them this evening.

Martin Horwood: As I was saying, the amendments tabled by those on the Conservative Front Bench are indistinguishable in their effect, and sometimes in their wording, from those tabled by those on the Back Benches. The Europhobia of some on the Conservative Back Benches has recaptured their Front-Bench spokesmen.
	Amendment No. 204 is a sniper amendment, which would delete the word "energy" from the consolidated text of the amended Rome treaty. In that sense, it is close to amendment No. 33. The other two amendments, Nos. 152 and 205, are blunderbuss amendments that try to take out any reference to energy wherever they can find one. All the amendments are aimed at changing the historical position. Energy was in practice a shared competence, even if it was not defined as such. It might have been shared in a rather obscure and complicated way, but the sharing of roles between the European Economic Community, as it originally was, and the member states dates back to the origins of the organisation. There was the European Coal And Steel Community—coal, after all, is a source of energy—and the European Atomic Energy Community, regardless of whether we would have agreed with that. Through Maastricht and beyond, successive Conservative Governments supported the principle that the EU was sometimes the most appropriate level at which to act on energy, while at other times the member state would be the most appropriate level. The treaty clarifies and consolidates that.
	If amendment No. 204 were to exclude energy from that consolidated and clarified list, that could be interpreted as removing energy from the list of shared competences in which it was previously included. That would not mean that we would simply go back to square one, as has been claimed, and the time before the Lisbon treaty. If we made the amendment and the treaty was passed, we would have gone back further, reversed the historical position and removed energy from the list of shared competences.
	What implications would that have? Measures such as the renewables directive would no longer be possible. It would not be possible to have the fun that we, and the Conservative Front Benchers, had with the Government about their failure to meet their original aspiration of providing 20 per cent. of the electricity supply from renewable energy. Attempts to compare and contrast the Government's policy on feed-in tariffs and renewable obligations would all have to take place domestically; we would not be able to use the European dimension in the argument, as energy would no longer be a European competence.
	Clearly that would be nonsense in an age when we need cross-border co-operation to tackle climate change, and the consolidation and security of supply in energy markets. Those effects on the energy market need to operate across all 27 nations. It would be an utterly retrograde step to repatriate the whole of energy policy. In practice, of course, that cannot happen. A treaty amended in that way belongs in some fantasy land inhabited by those on the Conservative Front Bench, because these are basically wrecking amendments.
	The amendments deal with that part of the Bill, as opposed to the treaty, that refers to the exclusion of common foreign and security policy. However, that element of the Bill is a little superfluous, as it merely restates the obvious—that a common foreign and security policy is not part of the treaty. In contrast, the things that the amendments would exclude are part of the treaty, and the legal result of accepting the amendments would be that the Bill would fail to ratify the Lisbon treaty.

Martin Horwood: The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) says that that would be excellent, but I am not sure that his Front-Bench colleagues agree, as they are keeping a bit quiet. Accepting the amendments would amount to a rejection of the Lisbon treaty, and would leave no possibility that aspects of it could be renegotiated, as the Conservatives imagine.
	The simpler and more honest path for the Conservatives would be to follow the recommendation from my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) that we hold a referendum allowing us to say yes or no to the treaty after we have ratified it. We could honestly vote yes in such a referendum, but I presume that members of the Conservative Front Bench would campaign for a no vote in it—and so for our exit from the EU.

Stuart Bell: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman; he will remember that 5 minutes to 10 one evening, I compared his use of the English language to that of Edmund Burke. He reminds me of a phrase of Lyndon Johnson's—that if we all had the same facts, we would all come to the same conclusion. That leads me on to Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar", a famous line of which is—

Peter Lilley: The hon. Gentleman is right.
	It has been suggested that the treaty contains protections, where QMV will not apply. Article 176A states:
	"Such measures shall not affect a Member State's right to determine the conditions for exploiting its energy resources".
	It refers to the "conditions for exploiting", not the allocation of energy resources. That means the licensing terms under which a member state's energy resources will be exploited, the method of allocating licences and so on. The treaty specifically does not state that QMV will not apply to decisions about the allocation of supply. Such decisions will continue to be made by qualified majority voting. Therefore, if circumstances arose similar to when Ted Heath tried to divert supplies away from the rest of Europe, which we had joined only two years earlier, to this country—he could not do so, because British law prevented him and he was not prepared to introduce new laws in the House; the French Government of course did override commercial law and diverted resources—we would not retain the right to allocate our own supplies of energy as we saw fit. That could include sharing them with our neighbours, if that was right and proper and we thought it a generous and helpful thing to do, as well as keeping them if we thought that our needs were greater.
	All decisions about the control of reserves and resources in a federal system are contentious—we are of course talking about a quasi-federal system. We do not have to look at Iraq, whose constitutional development is held up by an inability to make decisions about the allocation of responsibilities between the federal components and the central Government, nor do we have to look at the difficulties in Nigeria to see the same thing. We can look closer to home. Within the United Kingdom, considerable pressures for devolution arose simply over who owns the oil. Who has power over energy resources is therefore a contentious matter. Do we imagine that if that power is transferred from this place to European institutions, they will not want to use it to the advantage of the whole community, rather than allowing us to retain it and use those resources exclusively as we see fit?
	I urge hon. Members to read the words in the treaty closely. When they do, they are bound to conclude that we should pass the amendment standing in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) and, when we get to them, the amendments standing in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), and thereby ensure that we do not transfer powers over energy resources, which we have in greater abundance than anyone else in Europe.

Michael Connarty: First, I apologise to the hon. Member for Rayleigh for not supporting him this evening. He was very warm about my speech yesterday, but unfortunately I would describe amendment No. 204 as unnecessary and amendment No. 205 as mischievous, and certainly not constructive.
	The reality is that nothing will really change. That point was well made by the Liberal Front-Bench spokesman. There is already a shared competence, as was said in the Opposition motion that we debated earlier. All the provisions that are now in the treaty and that were proposed in the constitution were already in parts of other treaties that we had signed and which were operating. That is the truth. There is no real change; the proposals simply formalise and clarify the current arrangements.
	In effect, there is already shared competence in energy matters. The term is often used to describe areas of law making where the exercise of EU competence does not exclude the exercise of a member state's legislative powers. That has been the arrangement in energy markets for some time. We have already been co-operating and benefiting from solidarity—the fact that we mention the word does not make the position different.
	The speech that the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) gave was entirely wrong, because he left out the end of article 176, which says that the choice is allowed not only between different energy resources, but over the general structure of a nation's energy market and energy supply, which means that we will indeed continue to control our energy resources.
	That was the great controversy during the Convention, when there was a proposal—I spoke against it in the House—that would have prevented us as a nation from doing a bilateral deal with Norway. As the chair of the all-party British offshore oil and gas industry group, I was helping the then Minister Brian Wilson to negotiate a deal with the Norwegians on the Ormen Lange pipeline, to bring 20 per cent. of this country's gas supplies from Norway. That would have been prevented, had the original proposal in the Convention gone through.

Jim Murphy: I would never seek to do such a thing, either implicitly or explicitly, in the hon. Gentleman's presence. It is clear that nothing in the treaty affects the allocation of energy reserves or stocks. The new article does, however, strike the right balance in preserving the rights of member states. The Opposition have said that they support the principle of EU co-operation on energy, but removing all EU competence over energy, as amendment No. 33 would do, would prevent the UK from giving effect to any agreement we reach with EU partners.
	The right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden talked about the inclusion in a legally binding protocol of undistorted competition. President Sarkozy has acknowledged that that is symbolic rather than substance and— [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rayleigh might scoff at President Sarkozy; that is his business, not mine. I do not know whether he would also scoff at the Law Society's guide to the Lisbon treaty, published only yesterday, which states of the protocol on competition:
	"This does not change the current legal position."
	That is made clear by no less a body than the Law Society—of the United Kingdom, not of France.
	The hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) asked why we could not be just like Norway or Switzerland—and, if he was to complete the list, like Liechtenstein, which is the third great nation in that triumvirate. Norway is not in the EU; some Opposition Members realise that, and it is what they celebrate about the country. However, it still has to apply all EU energy acquis in full. So if we were to follow the hon. Gentleman's suggestion of being like Norway, we would have—lock, stock and barrel—every EU energy policy, but with no influence over or say in the policy.
	Opposition Members have sought to criticise the principle of solidarity. That principle was first established in article 2 of the Maastricht treaty.

Mark Francois: I have three minutes in which to speak, so may I briefly make a point about time? We have only one and half hours to debate amendments because of the Government's business motion. Again, a number of hon. Members rose to their feet at the conclusion of the allocated time as they had not been able to speak. We did not manage to reach the second group of amendments, so we cannot vote on amendment No. 142. That is a shame, because I was minded to support it and to ask my hon. Friends to do the same. Again, the promise of line-by-line scrutiny has not been adhered to.
	The Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), said that he did not always agree with our Back Benchers. We might not have agreed with the Liberal Democrat Back Benchers, had any of them bothered to turn up for the debate. He said that he did not agree with our amendments. We might not have agreed with his amendments, had the Liberals bothered to table any on this subject. The only amendment they keep trying to table, which has been repeatedly ruled out of order, is one on an in/out referendum. They do so because they are fundamentally split on what to do about a referendum on the EU constitution.
	Let me turn to the Government's position. Our amendment is largely based on their original negotiating position. The powers that we are attempting to remove from the treaty are exactly the same ones they attempted to oppose and then gave in on. Their own amendment tabled by the Minister's predecessor stated:
	"This provision is unnecessary as all aspects of energy policy are effectively covered elsewhere in the Treaty e.g. single market, environment. In addition, we have detailed concerns on the text, which we consider may have the unintended effect of changing the boundaries of EU competence and the types of measure which will be subject to unanimity."
	As the Government were too weak to insist on that, we are attempting to do what they should have done in the first place. That is the basis of our position. They accuse us of exaggerating, when all we are trying to do is to keep them honest in the first place. On that basis, and because the Minister has failed to answer the question all the way through, we are not satisfied, so I seek to test the will of the House on amendment No. 204.

Brian H Donohoe: I have been campaigning on the issue of the travelling community since I was elected in 1992, with limited success. I have tried to deal with and resolve the problems that affect the travelling people in my constituency and, I believe, across the whole country. When I came to this House I had a romantic view of travelling people; I believed that the Gypsy population was made up of good God-fearing people who listened to and understood the law, and who carried out their duties within it. Over the time that I have been a Member of Parliament my opinion has been substantially eroded. Those people have become a threat to the community, and the powers that be seem powerless to intervene effectively. As individual MPs, we face a brick wall while the problem escalates by the year.

Brian H Donohoe: I shall make another point and come back to my hon. Friend.
	In addition, an attempt has been made to pass legislation to ban bogus doorstep salesmen, a substantial percentage of whom are Travellers. The police have told me that, and I have the same information from the police force's central computers. It is clear that crime and travelling people are connected. I sometimes have as many as 50 or 60 caravans in my constituency at a time, and I know that crime problems are correlated with the arrival of Travellers there. That is unfortunate, but it is the case.
	I have also identified other problems that I am sure are familiar to other hon. Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, North (Jim Sheridan) has mentioned litter already, but another problem is the dumping of waste. For example, the local authority in my area gave Travellers Portaloos, but they were dumped in the skips that the authority had supplied for their rubbish and set alight. That is the sort of person that we are dealing with: I know that there are some good ones among them, but that story is typical of our experiences with them.
	Other problems include people on the beach park at Irvine being intimidated while out running or walking their dogs, and being told that they have no right to be there. Constituents of mine have been shot at by the travelling people, and the House would find it hard to believe the sort of debris—from building work being undertaken on their behalf—that has been left when Travellers leave a camp. Also, Travellers are guilty of selling items without having a trading licence, and we have sometimes found that their caravans have been illegally imported, with no duty paid.

Brian H Donohoe: I am sure that my hon. Friend is right. I will come to that point later. I am conscious of the time, and I would appreciate it if there were no more interventions; otherwise, the Minister will have no chance to reply.
	As part of my campaign I have held two summits in recent years, in which I worked closely with my two local authorities, their chief executives, trading standards officers, liaison officers, the police, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions. I have had meetings to attempt to resolve the issues, as we—including my constituents—see them, and I have not had the satisfaction of finding a solution to the problem. The local authority says that it is powerless to act because of how the law is structured. Unless there is a change to both Scottish law and the law in England and Wales, we will never eradicate the problem, which affects so many people across the country.
	Scottish law does not afford councils powers to deal with trespassers, and councils cannot use protective or regulatory powers to deal with offenders. One of my local authorities told me:
	"we have no easy way of physically moving offending Travelling People on from our land without the sanction of a court order. To get such an order we require evidence".
	The issue of the quality and quantity of such evidence, and how practical it is to gather it, is problematic. The chief legal officer of North Ayrshire council says:
	"the way in which Eviction Orders are granted would in my view require changes in primary legislation."
	All that relates only to council land. We then come to private land, which is even more problematic for those affected. As I said earlier, factories are trashed, in addition to everything else. I am asking for a review of English and Welsh legislation, as that might act as a catalyst for proposals on the subject north of the border.
	There is no doubt that some Travellers are decent law-abiding people. I have come across them, and they have my strong support for their right to go about their business. However, my constituency seems to be a magnet for what can only be described as convoys of cowboys. What really disturbs me is that they just do not listen to reason. There is no law that they will not break to go about their business. Worse, they prey on the gullible and the elderly in our society. One case came to my attention in which a man was taken to the bank and withdrew £102,000 to install a new roan pipe in his property. The people involved were charged, but that is an example of the situation that we face.
	The size of Britain's Traveller population is estimated to be around 300,000, with about 200,000 in settled housing. Data from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation show that in 2006 there were 16,300-odd caravans, of which 6,500 were on local authority sites, almost 6,000 on authorised private sites, 2,250 on unauthorised developments and just under 2,000 on unauthorised encampments. In England, part of the problem that has been identified to me are the marauding youngsters. Because they are not in school, they can commit offences and breach the peace. If they were at school, there would be fewer problems.
	In conclusion, I ask the Minister to take note of the questions that I am about to ask. If he cannot answer them tonight, perhaps he will do so at some other time. Can he tell me of any proposals to undertake another initiative to deal with the problem that I have described? As a member of the Select Committee on Transport, I, with my colleagues, joined the police and other agencies on Operation Mermaid, which was designed to take all the cowboys off our roads and buses. That was an extremely successful operation. Can a similar initiative be undertaken in respect of travelling people? Perhaps the Minister could engineer something along those lines.
	Does the Minister agree that there is overwhelming evidence of the problems that I have outlined? He must be aware of that. Will he consult the relevant officials and review the need for more funding to be given to third parties, such as dedicated police officers in all police forces, so that they can do the necessary work? Part of the problem is that police forces are underfunded, and do not have funding specifically allocated to deal with this matter.
	Will the Minister consider a change in the legislation, which is clearly required both south and north of the border? Legislation could and should be in force to deal with the unsolicited doorstep sales that Travellers are involved in. Finally, as a result of the debate, and in view of the amount of interest that has been shown, will the Minister consider meeting me, and some of the other hon. Members who have taken the trouble to come to the House this evening and listen to the debate?

Brian H Donohoe: When we originally set up the camps in my constituency, the condition was that when a local authority agreed to set up a camp it was given more powers to move on illegal travellers who might turn up in the area. Is that likely to feature in the legislation to which the Minister has referred?

Iain Wright: As I said earlier, the task group chaired by Sir Brian Briscoe judged that the current enforcement procedures were adequate but were not being complied with effectively enough. I must deal with that; I think that the existing framework is sufficient, but that we must push local authorities and others to ensure that it is implemented as much as possible.
	I was talking about additional funding, which my hon. Friend raised in his excellent speech. I believe that the Scottish Government have also made grant available.
	The task group that I mentioned concluded that our policy for the provision of sites was sound, but that progress in delivering new sites was slow. It recommended that where there was an established need for new Gypsy and Traveller sites, local authorities should begin work on preparing a site allocations development plan document now.
	The new framework that we have established is crucial to making progress on site provision in England. Coupled with effective enforcement action—which I fully appreciate is necessary—and a joined-up approach to the issues, an increase in site provision will help to create strong, cohesive communities. Only by significantly increasing the number of authorised sites will we ensure that all parts of the community have a decent place to live. That will reduce the tensions that unauthorised sites can cause with the settled community. It will also reduce the need for, and cost of, enforcement action, and will help to make it easier to use enforcement powers, as well as improving the life outcomes of the most socially excluded group in society.
	I congratulate my hon. Friend again on securing a debate on a very important issue. I thank him for giving me an opportunity to explain why the provision of authorised sites is so important, and why it should be seen in the policy context of affordable and appropriate accommodation for all. I hope that we shall have an opportunity to discuss the matter on other occasions, and I should be pleased to meet my hon. Friend and others for that purpose.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at three minutes past Eight o' clock.
	Correction
	 Official Report, 29 January 2008: Col. 232, Division No. 59, under the Ayes insert: Blunkett, rh Mr. David.